This invention relates to optical communication circuits and, more particularly, to an all-optical transmitter and receiver for use in an optical communication system.
In prior art optical communication systems, the data transmission rate may be maximized by minimizing the bandwidth utilized for the transmission of control signals (clock synchronization, framing, etc.) necessary to recover the transmitted data. Such a requirement usually results in system designs which operate synchronously (rather than asynchronously) and which usually require elaborate clock recovery circuitry. The clock recovery circuits required in such synchronous designs tend to be complex, expensive and often unable to operate reliably at increasing optical data communication rates.